I have worked within the field of child protection for 11 years, across local authority and residential settings. For the past seven years, I have worked independently for local authorities, completing parenting assessments and offering mentalization based parenting intervention.

I live in Battlefied, and can easily come to your home if you live in this area or anywhere in the southside, but I would also happily come visit your home if you live in the city centre. Robb didn't make it as a professional dancer. Ultimately, her body was not built for the exacting requirements demanded of Balanchine's ballerinas, and she moved on to other things. Yet ballet had wrapped its pointe ribbons around her soul—she could leave ballet, but it would not leave her. Thus this book: Don't Think, Dear is part memoir of being a student, part dive into the history of Balanchine and all that surrounded him: the New York City Ballet, the School of American Ballet, the Balanchine technique (which enabled dancers to perform surprising new feats, but at a steep cost to their bodies), the way Balanchine demanded dangerous thinness and complete submission of his dancers.Yesterday I had a call to introduce myself to a client who I am going to start working with during a 12 week video based mentalization intervention. Her relationship with her 7 year old daughter is at breaking point.

A foster carer who doesn’t mentalize for the child can not offer them the sensitive and attuned response they need, especially when they may be demonstrating challenging or distressing behaviour. Mum felt during our first session that when thinking about the ‘secure base’ element of their relationship the sense of ‘shared joy’ was very much missing. Mentalizing means you can make links between how your own thoughts and feelings influence your behaviour. We also mentalize for others – attuning to what another person may be thinking or feeling and how this may be impacting their behaviour.Children in foster care must experience a caregiver who has a curiosity for what is going on inside their mind, what are they thinking…how are they feeling? A generation before Berenice Abbott, another trailblazing lesbian photographer, created her iconic series Changing New York, Alice Austen captured the changing face of the city — this ever-changing emblem of a city — during its most rapid period of transformation as modernity was finding its sea legs and America was becoming America. Postman collecting the day’s mail at 56th Street and Madison Avenue, part of Alice Austen’s 1896 series Street Types of New York. ( Alice Austen House archive.) Newsboy at Grand Central Depot, part of Alice Austen’s 1896 series Street Types of New York. ( Alice Austen House archive.) Organ-grinder with wife at 48th Street and Broadway, part of Alice Austen’s 1896 series Street Types of New York. ( Alice Austen House archive.) Street-cleaner at 34th Street, New York City, part of Alice Austen’s 1896 series Street Types of New York. ( Alice Austen House archive.) Two working children at City Hall Park, part of Alice Austen’s 1896 series Street Types of New York. ( Alice Austen House archive.) The guide is written by Alice Loving, a practitioner, academic and trainer specialising in parenting assessments, attachment, trauma and mentalization. Alice is a lecturer at the Centre for Child Protection at Kent University. This doesn’t need to be any grand intervention, but can be stories of meaningful conversations with parents or young people, direct work with children, light bulb moments, or simply connecting with someone in a way that you know they may never have experienced before. A loving mother, grandmother, great grandmother and sister, she started her career in data entry and processing at Marion General Hospital in 1971. She would continue for 39 years, retiring as a supervisor in 2010.

I think finding some connection, however big or small, goes some way to reducing the power imbalance and we both need that. We are here together, with the same aims, doing this work together.

Alice kind of meanders in this book, trying to figure out where ballet belonged in her life and where it fits in today. There is a lot of negativity and bad feelings, almost coming across as rotten grapes because she didn't get what she wanted out of her professional career.